Two dogs, seven guineafowl and 20-odd ISA brown chickens. That’s how many animals Ray and Jenni Hill have at their property in Kialla.
The Hills have nothing but positive things to say about all their animals, which not only provide comfort and love but also, courtesy of the guineafowl and chickens, fresh eggs.
Their two dogs, Rusty and Roly, are kelpies.
“Rusty is 12 and we got him at six weeks old,” Mrs Hill said.
“Roly is 14 and we got him three years ago. He was a rescue dog.”
As for personality, Rusty is very much a ‘feed me and love me’ type of dog, but he pulls his own weight.
“Rusty is the boss of the whole place,” Mr Hill said.
“He rounds up the chooks and puts them away. He rounds up the guineafowl and tries to (put them away).”
He also loves water.
Roly, on the other hand, is much more placid and happier to go with the flow, with less love for water than Rusty.
The Hills got their seven guineafowl from a place near Katandra and joke they are like watchdogs.
“If something strange happens the guineafowls are straight on to it,” Mr Hill said.
He said the guineafowl eggs were mostly yolk and had a stronger flavour than those from the chickens.
The shells are also tougher than chicken eggs, a fact the local crows have learnt to their dismay.
“Crows will pick up the (chicken) eggs and they take them out and drop them on the bitumen road to break it ... they try and break guineafowl eggs, of course they’re a lot harder,” Mr Hill said.
“So quite often I’ll find the guineafowl eggs out on the side of the road somewhere where the crows have taken them out and dropped them.”
For anyone thinking of getting a guineafowl, Mrs Hill recommends purchasing more than one, as they are social creatures.
“You’d go mad with the noise they make looking for somebody else,” Mrs Hill said.
As for their chickens, the 20-odd birds lay about a dozen eggs each day.
Both Rusty and Roly are naturally affectionate; however, Mrs Hill said the chickens were also quite fond of humans.
Somewhat surprisingly, this affection is shared among the animals, though with some stipulations.
“They’ve all got certain places, like the chooks don’t like guineafowls coming into their pen. So they'll chase the guineafowl out,” Mr Hill said.
As for the eggs the chickens produce, the Hills eat them or give them to friends or barter with them.
Words: Gabriel Garcia
Pictures: Rechelle Zammit